Attention Bison Nation: our esteemed university is facing a startling pandemic. We have been faced with a controversy of epic proportions.

This controversy has plagued Bison Nation, or shall I say Bison Nation, for decades upon decades. It is something that linguists have been confounded by, going from end to end of our great nation trying to find a reasonable conclusion. This unparalleled conflict has caused tensions to arise among members our own student body and has even threatened to tear our city of Fargo apart.

So how do you say it: Bison or Bison?

As many are aware, there are two distinct ways in which bison is spoken. People who grew up around the Fargo-Moorhead area or people who follow NDSU athletics tend to pronounce the mascot’s name as “bison.”

Oppositely those from other regions of the country pronounce the word in a way that sounds foreign to us FM residents – “bison.”

To get to the root of this baffling conundrum, we took it into our hands to listen to the voices of the people and see which side they viewed as superior.

Linguists are very familiar with other pronunciation phenomena similar to bison and bison, such as potato or potato, tomato or tomato, pecan or pecan, caramel or caramel and couch or couch.

When one student was asked about where he stands on the issue, he responded, “Well, since I grew up watching the Bison, they’ve always been the bison in my heart. I mean I won’t judge anyone if they pronounce it Bison, but I do think it sounds a little weird.”

Another NDSU student held a different opinion on the topic. She said, “I don’t even know why this is still an issue. You North Dakotans are a different breed. I don’t know why you say bison when it’s clearly bison. Get your act together and jump on board with the rest of the country.”

After receiving split results from our field work, we decided to approach the head honcho himself, California-native Dean Bresciani.

“Guys, say it how you want, bison, bison. Who cares. What really matters is that we are all one big family,” Bresciani said before hopping onto his private jet.

Well there you have it folks. We are just as disappointed as you that we were unable to put an end to this debilitating debate. So however you say it, just remember we are all members of one great Bison Nation, or Bison Nation.

Anyways, you know what they say: potato, potato.